 Hey, thanks for joining us. We are actually live in the Cal OES Newsroom. I'm Brian May along with Rob Mayberry and BJ Jones from our law enforcement department is joining us today. And we're going to tackle a very tough subject. We're talking about not only active shooters, but active assailants. What does that mean when you have kids in school? And what does that mean when you're just out and about in public? Get your questions ready. We're going to answer those questions. And we've got a great discussion coming up right after this. And again, welcome live to our Cal OES Newsroom. I'm Brian May. Rob Mayberry, one of our public information officers. And we're joined today by BJ Jones, assistant chief for our law enforcement branch. First of all, thanks for joining us today. Thank you for the invitation. Difficult discussion today, but it's one that we really need to be happening based on not only the last three weeks looking back to Florida, but even as we speak now, there's an active search taking place at a school in Northern California. So we're seeing stuff like this all the time. I want to, first of all, let you distinguish between what we would normally call active shooter and active assailant from a law enforcement branch. BJ, what does that mean? And what are you guys looking for when you hear those words? Well, the terminology active shooter has been around for a while, because those were those sensational events that got everybody's attention. What we're trying to focus on now, it's active assailant. It doesn't matter necessarily why they're doing it. They're just doing it. And they're using different pieces of equipment, whether it's a vehicle, edged weapons, firearms, even explosives have been used in different assaults. What we're trying to do is make sure people understand that you need to be vigilant and make sure you're understanding what you're up against. And there's no hard and fast rule. You have to be prepared to deal with that situation in whatever form it may come with. So we're not obviously talking about just guns here. We're talking about other weapons that could be used by an assailant, not just shooting. Absolutely. How the person or persons go about this really comes down to the evil in their heart and what they want to go out and do and how they want to inflict the damage in the carnage really when it comes down to it. I've been involved in incidents where the assailants were using edged weapons. So I mean, it's not solely a firearms related problem. It's sad that this focus has a lot on our schools. And I don't want the discussion today to be strictly about schools, but it was three weeks ago today that we saw the shooting in Florida. And in the last three weeks since that Florida shooting, 638 schools have been targeted across the country. 33 schools have had to close. 15 more have been on lockdown. And nationwide, just these threats are up from about 10 a day nationwide to about 70 a day nationwide. For those of us who aren't in law enforcement, those numbers are staggering. Your thoughts on hearing those kind of numbers? Well, you know, you always try and find the good and the bad. At least that's what I do. So maybe that's a sign that people are more vigilant. They're taking time to report things that maybe in the past they kind of dismissed. Oh, that's just so-and-so acting out. Well, we can't anymore in the society look the other way. If we don't take some type of preventative action, notifying local law enforcement, adhering to the see something, say something mantra, those are the type of things that need to come out and let law enforcement go out and determine the severity of the threats that are made. So as Brian mentioned, there's a lot more threats and that's what most of these are, just threats. How do we let people know, get out of the complacency? You know, doing the lockdowns. I mean, schools have to obviously close down our lockdown when they get this threat and most of these are just nothing but threats. So how do you help people or what advice do you give so that they don't become complacent or numb to this? Well, so one of the primary job that I have is I go to different schools and other government facilities and places of worship and I will talk to them about active, assailant awareness. And what that comes down to is it's taking a product so they understand that you have to be vigilant. You cannot sit back and just say that's someone else's responsibility. It's also designed to make these people at these sites understand they need to think about how they're going to respond and we provide other tools and videos and discussion points and case debriefs on things that have happened before to help them understand that, you know, this may not have happened here but we have plenty of examples to draw from and learn from. We grew up in a world where we had fire drills at school. Those fire drills have turned into other types of drills now and schools are doing this all across the nation before we move on. And again, I don't want the conversation to focus strictly on schools today but we were given permission to go into a school in Sacramento last week. This was a drill that had been scheduled since the beginning of the year. It wasn't something in reaction to what happened in Florida but I'm gonna take you inside there and drill this past week. Attention staff and students, we are in a lockdown situation. Please follow all lockdown procedures. Teachers review every single thing they're supposed to do. Starting with, you need to listen. And then we walk them through the whole thing of what we're gonna do from the fact that if you are near a room, you get into the nearest room. Teachers are gonna take any kid they can at that point they're locking the doors and nobody's coming in that door until they get them all clear. Especially now you've gotta be prepared for every possible situation, you know. I was growing up. We practiced things like duck and cover under desk as we were worried about the possibilities of a nuclear war. So those days we were preparing for those. The reality is now that you prepare for, you prepare for fire, you prepare for earthquakes. You prepare for, you know, somebody dropping a toxic load of chemicals out in the street and you prepare for the possibility of a shooter. This is one of those ones you wanna get perfect. You don't, this is not where you, when you're dealing with people's lives you don't wanna glitch. And truthfully as a school administrator you think it keeps you up at night? That's it, are your kids safe? That's what wakes you up in the morning the first time you ever have a kid safe today. I wanna educate him but I keep him safe. My thanks to Natoma's Pacific Pathway Prep Middle School. They're the ones that let us go in there. BJ, there's a video that's been published and it's seen across the country run. And I wanna make sure I get the wording correctly here in the correct order. I'll let you describe it. It's run, hide, fight. Yes, that's correct. Describe what that means to me. So what we're trying to do at the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, my direction through Director Gilducci to Chief Payson is when I go out to these school sites that's a core component of the presentation. It's a building block if you will for the people at the school sites to understand this is a very, very safe plan but you have to realize if you're not thinking about this and you're not doing some type of rehearsal this is only gonna be as good as the people put time into it. So if you can run, I always tell people in my presentations when was the last time you looked at an exit sign when you go either to a school or a public place and they stop and think, well, that should be part of your clue for the run. Hiding, there's several videos out there to talk about it. Hiding, one of the things that I always discuss is the difference between cover and concealment. Concealment is just something that you hide behind. You wanna look for things that you would believe reasonably could stop an active shooter with a weapon. And then the last one is fight and that's improvised weapons. This is not the day, don't let it be the day that you're going to meet your demise. You have that person meet their demise. Commit to those actions. Commit to the violence that you need to do to stop this person to save everybody who's around there, including the person. My wife is a teacher at a high school in Sacramento. Her classroom sits on the corner of a building and has an outside door. So if her school were to have a policy to where you stay in class or you, like, we can't treat every situation exactly the same. You have to look at your surroundings, I would suspect. And that's what you would tell teachers in the classroom or students in the classroom. Every situation can and will be different. Absolutely, you're taking people who are educators who do a good job in their field and you're trying to teach them situational awareness, threat management, things that you have to be aware of. For example, one of the things I advise school districts and places I do presentations are, don't be locked into one tactic. The Tomas, the lockdown tactic, great building block. Build off of that. Start pushing down the decision making in a crisis to the lowest level, say the teacher. If they hear firearms on the other side of a large campus, it may be best that they evacuate and run and try and find safety in a residential neighborhood. Clearly that decision has to be made with that person with the goal of saving everyone and getting them out of harm's way. And we focus a lot on schools, obviously, because of the recent tragedy in Parkland. But there's also been the tragedy in Las Vegas with the festival, the church in Texas, and as well as the nightclub in Orlando. So this run, hide, or fight, it should be applied anywhere we are, any situation we're in. And that's another example there. That was to be candid about it, very unique, huge tragedy, and people started after a little bit of time and a little bit of the denial, they saw what was going on and people started looking for cover they were hiding. And they may have had to run to cover. I mean, I think we've all seen the numerous videos that were posted on social media or news outlets where people were hiding in trailers, being out of the line of sight, seeking cover behind cars or what they believe were large walls that would stop ammunition or bullets from coming down and raining on them. So the denial part is this little delay that you see in the beginning, and then they had to do some decision-making and that's where the run and the hiding and then they didn't have to fight. The law enforcement did that for them. And I want to be clear, when you say denial, that's our brain telling us, wait, I'm not really hearing what I think I'm hearing. That's kind of us trying to justify that that's not really happening right now. That's what you mean by that, right? Yes, I've been very fortunate to attend lots of debriefs and work with all kinds of great professionals throughout the United States. Some of the things I've seen in videos is literally, maybe it's the desensitization through whatever media is out there, video games or movies. It's like, wow, that's gunfire. And you can see this on the people's faces. They're not really processing what it is. Then they sit there and go, I need to do something. And sometimes it's too late. And other times if they react quick enough and they've already thought this through a little bit, hence looking at the exit signs I talked about earlier, they can get out of the way. Let's be very clear with people who are watching, I'm going to the mall tonight with my family. What should I, even on a normal day, be doing as I walk into the mall with my family? You mentioned looking at the exit signs, but let's drive this point home. What should people be doing when they're out in large places like that? As a trainer for many, many years and now doing this for governors, office emergency services, situational awareness cannot stop just because you're going out to have a relaxing time. You're going to the public. These are soft targets. These are places people who want to do harm are going to do harm. I participated in training over at the Roosevelt Mall. We've talked about that location and the things that could happen there. Condition yellow, we call it. You have to be looking and seeing and what's going on and what are the people doing. And even in my own family, they know certain things. I'll say, okay, let's get out of here. This isn't good. If I'm leaving and separating from you guys, that means you get in the car or you see cover, you find a way to get out of the way and let me get out of the way as well. So if something bad doesn't happen to other people. And no parent wants to hear that their child's school is on lockdown. What advice, the first thing a parent wants to do is get to the school to make sure their child's okay. What advice would you give parents in this situation like that? Well, as a parent, I absolutely understand why you want to get there because you want to take care of your children. The law enforcement professionals, the first responders, the teamwork between EMS, fire and law enforcement, they have to get in there and solve the problem, whatever it is, to whatever level, whether it's an active shooter or it's just a threat. The parents coming, hopefully school districts have other types of staging areas and post-incident reunification because the parents coming up there for their children is understood, but it just adds to the problem because you have to manage all the people who are coming in to make sure that depending on the threat, obviously, that these are not part of the problem, that they are not considered threats, that we will get them united with their children. And you touched on this a little earlier in the show, but you mentioned the see something, say something, and that's a campaign that we at Cal OES have been behind for a long time, but let's drive that point home as well. Whether you're a student, elementary school, middle school, high school, a teacher administrator, or whether you're just Joe Public out, it sounds very simple to say it, but I'll say, if you see something that looks out of the normal, then say something, right? Absolutely. Your local enforcement first, and like in my presentations, I bring up the SAR at our tech site and I show them how they can get on there and make a suspicious activity report online as well. Clearly get a hold of local enforcement first. They need to be the first responder to deal with it, but clearly the other information is valuable to all the stakeholders who are trying to solve these problems. BJ Jones, thank you very much for joining us today. And I know we'll just kind of mention at OES, you guys at the law enforcement branch of OES are working with law enforcement agencies all across the state, really all the time, helping prepare for situations and make sure that the agencies and then individuals and non-government organizations are prepared. That's kind of what you do on a day-to-day basis, right? We try to support law enforcement and public safety in any way we can. And as we speak, I think your boss chief pays in at OES is at a drill in the Bay Area going over some things that could happen possibly on a training, kind of avoiding that and making sure that everybody's safe. That is correct. It's a day-to-day operation. It's the world that we live in now. It's kind of the new normal that we talk about, but if you see something, say something, make sure you're aware of where the exits are and make sure you know what the situation is, especially when you're out in a large area. And we appreciate all that you guys in law enforcement do for all of us. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us. We are again live from the newsroom, the Cal OES newsroom, and we'll be back next week.